Marco Rubio and the GOP’s “Credible Alternative” on Foreign Policy

Max Boot does his best to separate Republican hawks from Romney’s defeat:

But, whatever the polls say, future Republican presidential candidates would be well advised to undertake a real effort to explain their foreign policy positions to the country and to reestablish foreign policy credibility which, to some extent, has been frittered away by George W. Bush’s early mistakes in Iraq. It may be unfair to hold an entire party responsible for one president’s mistakes—and not to give Bush proper credit for rescuing the situation in Iraq with the surge—but Republicans will have to recognize that that’s the way it is [bold mine-DL]. They cannot take national security policy for granted. Instead, they must work hard between now and 2016 to make a convincing case about why Obama has gone wrong and what a credible alternative is. That is something that Sen. Marco Rubio, who is already being talked about as a potential candidate in 2016, has done especially well. Other GOP hopefuls would be well advised to follow his example.

It’s important to remember that most of Romney’s foreign policy arguments during the campaign were simply echoes of what Republican hawks were already saying. He obsessed over the “apology tour” nonsense and fell back on rhetoric about American exceptionalism and “the American Century” because this is what many of them were doing in 2009-2010. His foreign policy speeches were laced with Republican hawks’ complaints on Obama’s conduct of policies related to Israel, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Britain, and Poland, etc. The “credible alternative” that Marco Rubio has presented in the last two years is virtually identical to what Romney was saying, which should tell you everything you need to know about how credible Rubio’s alternative really is.

As for the GOP’s credibility on these issues, it wasn’t just Bush’s early mistakes in Iraq that cost the party in the eyes of the public. The poor management of the Iraq war was certainly an important reason why Republicans aren’t trusted on foreign policy and national security as they once were, but more than that is the stubborn insistence within the GOP that the Iraq war wasn’t a major strategic blunder and needless waste of lives and resources. A large majority of Americans recognizes that the war was unnecessary and wasn’t worth fighting, and they hold the GOP as a whole most responsible for it because most Republicans insisted on defending the war until the very end. It isn’t unfair to place a large share of the blame for the Iraq war on the Republican Party as a whole, whose leading members were more enthusiastically in favor of it from the beginning and supported it long after it was clear that the war itself–and not just the way it had been fought–had been a horrible error. Until Republican hawks work to repudiate the party’s identification with the Iraq war and abandon the sort of thinking that led to that war, they will continue to be distrusted by the public and they will deserve to be. If the GOP wants to regain the public’s trust on foreign policy, Marco Rubio is one of the worst messengers it could have. Other potential candidates would be well-advised not to imitate Rubio.

Of course, there is more to the failures of the Bush administration on foreign policy than just the Iraq war. The tendency to inflate manageable threats into uncontainable, “existential” ones or to invent threats where none exists is not limited to the GOP, but Republican hawks are most inclined to indulge in both. The impulse to believe that the U.S. must “do something” in response to most foreign crises and conflicts is one that members of both parties share, but it is strongest in the GOP, and Republican hawks tend to support resorting to the use of force more often and more quickly than just about anyone else. All of these bad habits distort Republican foreign policy thinking, and they lead Republican politicians to adopt intransigent and confrontational positions that neither the general public nor many of their own constituents accept. These are not positions that will benefit from more forceful or frequent explanation. Most Americans recoil from them because they understand very well what is being offered to them: an apparently unending series of unnecessary and costly conflicts and overseas commitments that seem to make no discernible contributions to American security.

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7 Responses to Marco Rubio and the GOP’s “Credible Alternative” on Foreign Policy

We now in a situation of PERMANENT war, supported with different styles by both parties. Both parties subscribe, the Dems more multilateralist and the GOP more unilateralist, to the “Freedom Agenda,” “responsibility to protect,” and all the other rigmarole that supports an ever more hyperactive national security state.

Notwithstanding all the flag-waving and buzz-words, this policy doesn’t really inspire the proles, even if we have always been at war with Eastasia. But without a spokesman or two, an alternate strategic conception will not get a hearing. Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, alas, came across as quirky and were portrayed as such.

Until a credible advocate emerges, views like yours will light up only our comfortable but rather tiny corner of the Internet. Natheless, kudos to you, sir, for fighting the good fight.

The neoconservative ideology is like a slug which is salted–you may think you are doing it harm, but it will just slime its way out of danger and pretend as nothing has happened. Just like the failures of the Bush Administration are proclaimed to be failures of execution (and poor management by W); Romney’s loss is not because he pursued bad policy–but because he was just a poor campaigner. Etc.

Salt is insufficient–these slugs need to be nailed to a board, and dropped in a bucket filled with brine, with a tightly closed lid.

Actually, one good way to import furriners is to go to war with them. Had we let Uncle Ho have his way with Vietnam, we would have no Little Saigons, and had we let the Horn of Africa to its denizens, there would be few Somali cab drivers in Minneapolis.

So be prepared to welcome Pushtun quislings, er, freedom-fighters, to Lubbock, TX or Salt Lake City.

Next time let’s invade some place where the women are really good-looking. I’ve heard Circassian women are gorgeous.

Where do Republicans go from here? Karl Rove’s permanent majority fantasy was based on a permanent stronghold on foreign policy and the false prosperity of speculative bubble economics. Both notions have entirely imploded. If the electorate didn’t trust Romney to manage the economy who would they?

Just try listening to one of Rubio’s foreign policy speeches and not get a 2005 chill down your spine. It is unrepentant neoconservative Bushismo and no candidate for the next decade can run on that and win. Not that the Democrats have any answers but at least they can make some sensible adjustments without having to pander to the Limbaughs of the world.

Until the GOP can figure a way out of being held captive by the FOX news industrial entertainment complex they will always look like clownish performers. The Democrats don’t have that burden and they can sell out their base at will without consequence. Progressives hate Obama almost as much as Ted Nugent.